the log of the Gloria, scrawled by the second Mark in a Malay port.
I have heard only now that on the third day of June, this year 1854, my dear Father was lost with his Ship, the Fortune of the Indies and all therein, in the China Sea, lat. and long, unknown. Few particulars are available; it appears the typhoon which delayed my progress from the Bashee Islands struck with greater force farther west. One survivor was picked up clinging to a hatch-grating, by the Aphrodite, Salem, just arrived here, but died before any detail could be obtained from him. My Father was in the forty-sixth Year of his age.
Grandfather Mark did not add that the Fortune of the Indies was lost on the anniversary of the day she set sail on her first cruise. And the model, too, was gone. In vain did Miss Lucia and Miss Ellen, racking their wits at Jane's urgent plea, try to remember just when it was that the little vessel hung no more above the mantel-shelf. A bulky thing to steal, and a difficult one to dispose of, but stolen it must have been, for it was scarcely believable that any Ingram, however penniless, would sell a thing so precious. But there the matter stood; the Ingrams finally accepted
